Cylindrical rollers are never perfectly cylindrical. A common defect of a cylindrical roller is radial taper. A roller with a radial taper will induce a lateral shear force into the web. This shear force will cause a steering effect as well as a cross machine direction compressive stress which can lead to the formation of troughs and wrinkles in a web. This publication addresses these topics and presents a model to help determine the specification for taper in "cylindrical" rollers. An analytical model is presented, experiments were performed, and the data was compared to predictions from the proposed model.Mechanical and Aerospace Engineerin
